Meteorite Landings

Summary

This comprehensive data set from The Meteorological Society contains information on all of the known meteorite landings.

Analysis

The goal of this analysis is to create an insightful and interactive data visualization which draws some inference about meteorite landing locations, mass, and year of occurrence.

library(ggplot2)
library(RSocrata)
library(devtools)
library(gganimate)
library(magick)
library(dplyr)
library(ggmap)
library(gapminder)
library(animation)
library(lubridate)

data_in <- read.socrata("https://data.nasa.gov/Space-Science/Meteorite-Landings/gh4g-9sfh")

head(data_in)

Clean up column names

names(data_in)[c(3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9)] <- c("name_type", "class", "mass", "found", "latitude", "longitude")
names(data_in)

 [1] "name"        "id"          "name_type"   "class"       "mass"        "found"      
 [7] "year"        "latitude"    "longitude"   "GeoLocation"

Fix the year by removing MM-DD

data_in$year_fix <- year(data_in$year)

Explore the variables by class distribution

data_in %>% group_by(class) %>% 
            summarise(n = n()) %>% 
            arrange(desc(n))

data_in %>% group_by(name_type) %>% 
            summarise(n = n()) %>% 
            arrange(desc(n))

Filter out erroneous latitudes and longitudes

data_in_clean <- data_in %>% filter(latitude >= -90 & 
                                    latitude  <= 90 & 
                                    longitude >= -180 &
                                    longitude <= 180  & 
                                    !is.na(mass), 
                                    !is.na(year))

Clean up method of whether the meteorite was Found or not

data_in_clean$found <- if_else(data_in_clean$found == "Fell", "No", "Yes")

Visualizations

Set up some options for plotting

theme_set(theme_minimal())
options(scipen=10000)

Static display

p <- ggplot() +
    borders("world", colour="gray50") +
    geom_point(aes(x = longitude, y = latitude, color = found, frame = year_fix), data = data_in_clean, alpha = .5) +
    labs(title = "Worldwide Meteorite Landings ", 
       x = "", y = "") +
    theme(legend.position="bottom", 
        axis.text.x = element_blank(),
        axis.text.y = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks = element_blank())

Ignoring unknown aesthetics: frame

p

gganimate(p, "meteorite-landings.gif")

Graphs cannot be vertically aligned. Placing graphs unaligned.Graphs cannot be horizontally aligned. Placing graphs unaligned.Executing: 
'convert' -loop 0 -dispose none -delay 0 plot1.png -dispose previous -delay 100
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    'meteorite-landings.gif'
Output at: meteorite-landings.gif

Insights

• Dominate areas where meteorites were found are: Australia, USA, and Antartica

Resources

I reused some code and modified examples from:

1. https://rpubs.com/MVellinger/Gibeon

2. http://relevantmisc.com/ggplot/instagram/2016/02/14/ig-over-time/

3. https://rpubs.com/sjackman/gapminder-gganimate

Thanks to Bob Rudis for helping me to get ImageMagick installed (Twitter is a powerful resource)